Turing Award Winners Visit Tianjin University

On May 16, 2019, the Turing Award winners, Professor John Hopcroft, Professor Raj Reddy, and Professor Manuel Blum, as well as the U.S. Presidential Award winner, Professor Lenore Blum, visited Tianjin University. Tianjin University President Jin Donghan and Vice President Hu Wenping met with the guests. Leaders from the College of Intelligence and Computing and the Office of International Cooperation attended the meeting.

President Jin Donghan extended a warm welcome to the experts and gave a brief introduction of Tianjin University. He expressed the hope that both sides would enhance mutual understanding and conduct substantive cooperation with each other. Vice President Hu Wenping introduced the experts to Tianjin University’s history, discipline layout, personnel training and international cooperation policies. He noted that Tianjin University attaches great importance on the development and layout of relevant disciplines in the field of Artificial Intelligence and expects to deepen cooperation in the future.

Four visiting experts expressed their great pleasure of this visit and briefed on the general situation of their respective universities. Focusing on the core goal of personnel training in universities, both parties discussed greater details of enrollment mechanisms, talent training modes, and how to improve teaching quality, etc.

During the visit, the four experts attended the World Intelligence Congress and gave speeches at the main forum. Professors Manuel Blum and Lenore Blum were also invited to give special lectures for high school students from Hebei Province and Tianjin on the Tianjin University campus.

Brief introduction of the four experts

John E. Hopcroft is the IBM Professor of Engineering and Applied Mathematics in Computer Science at Cornell University, and winner of the 1986 Turing Award. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, a foreign member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Raj Reddy is a University Professor of Computer Science and Robotics, and Moza Bint Nasser Chair at Carnegie Mellon University, and winner of the 1994 Turing Award. He is the recipient of the Padma Bhushan in 2001, the Honda Prize in 2005 and Vannevar Bush Award in 2006, and member of the National Academy of Engineering and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Manuel Blum, is the Bruce Nelson University Professor of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University, winner of the 1995 Turing Award. He was elected to the American Association for the Advancement of Science (1988), the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1995), the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (2002), and the U.S. National Academy of Engineering (2006).

Lenore Blum, Distinguished Career Professor of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University, recipient of the 2004 Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics and Engineering Mentoring—a program supported and administered by the National Science Foundation (NSF).